Dr Peter White's Blog

About Me

I am retired from the Uni. of Queensland, and have numerous interests inside and outside of the uni. I play classical, bluegrass, country and folk guitar (hows that for a mix?) I am a member of the Australian Labor Party and am currently branch secretary of the Mt Coot-tha branch. I'm also involved in developing virtual reality builds and websites. Never bored!

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Populating Oz

Recently our federal treasurer, Peter Costello (Rev. Tim Costello's evil twin), got on the airwaves saying that Australians had to have more kids, and to rely less on immigration, which creates problems of assimilation, differences, etc. ad nauseum.

Thanks, Peter.

Oz now has about 20 million inhabitants that we know of. Most are settled in 8 cities: Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Darwin, Hobart and Canberra. Other than Darwin, all have a serious lack of basic resources, particularly fresh water. More people will slurp up what water is remaining faster -- goes without saying.

Then, there's the 'peak oil' issue. Our planetary reserves are winding down. Fuel is therefore dearer. This creates inflationary trends. We are running out of oil, yet expect to operate the same way we have done over the past 80 years -- slaves to the oil economy.

Less water, less oil, less good thinking by the vaunted leadership.

And then on top of that, we have the new industrial deform laws which are removing workers' rights and benefits which were gained after a century of hard struggle. These rights enabled an egalitarian society to emerge from the old European class standards. The new laws want to take us back not to the 1950s as we feared, but the 1850s, where the workers knew their place, forelocks were duly tugged, and the middle classes could get on with what was most important: making money and enslaving the world.

The catch phrase is jobs. We need more jobs. In order to do this, the trick is to lower wages, make conditions worse, have the wage slaves work more than 1 job each, thereby keeping them off the streets and off the dole.

All this with diminishing resources -- water and oil. All this with the current government's slogan of 'permanent campaigning'. All this with the egalitarian society we had fading away before our very eyes. All this to cater to the haves, and the have mores (George Bush).

O brave new world. I'm so grateful that I didn't have kids who will inherit the whirlwind we have sown with our greed and incompetence.